Loving Women (15 page)

That’s what I heard in the smoke and noise and broken pieces of the night, in those murmured stories held together by the voice of a poor dead lonesome hillbilly singer. And I felt for the first time since leaving home that I was not alone. That I’d never been alone. That I too was part of this huge secret society of loss, and here in Dixie’s Dirt Bar I was attending a meeting of the Pensacola chapter.

Around ten, as they did every night, the whores arrived. “Look at em, God’s truest angels,” Sal said. Max shook his head and whispered about the clap, but Sal just laughed and grabbed a skinny girl and danced with her to “Cold, Cold Heart.” The other guys grabbed for female arms and waists and asses, and the girls were all weepy over Hank and buried their heads on Navy shoulders and some of them kicked off their shoes to feel the damp dirt of the Dirt Bar’s floor. “Go ahead, honey,” Dixie said, and I danced with a skinny gap-toothed girl from the bayous of what she called Luziana, washed up here in Pensacola four years before while trying to get to Miami. She called me “mate” and said she sure felt bad for Hank and asked me if I wanted to go out to the van and I said I was broke and she said it was only four dollars and I said maybe next time, and she said, Well, okay sailor, fair enough and when
the tune ended, she went to Max and took him to the dance floor and after awhile they went outside.

Soon it was all sailors and whores, dancing on the hard-packed red dirt. There was a tattooed girl and a toothless girl and some rough girls with coarse skin and hillbilly accents. They called us “mate” or “sailor,” and I thought that must have been part of what they did. They couldn’t possibly remember the names of all the guys they fucked, so they called us mate or sailor or sport. Maybe they didn’t want to remember. I danced with some of them, but mostly I watched, trying to sort out the faces, thinking that I would like to draw them, that maybe I could make them more beautiful than they were and that would make them happy. For they were not happy, not one of them. And I realized then that I was at a wake. The corpse had been found in a Cadillac in West Virginia, but they were mourning other things: people forgotten and lost, lovers gone, broken promises, the past. Still, no matter what its object, it was a proper wake, like any other back home. And when the whores laughed when Sal yelled or grabbed their asses they were just doing that night what the Irish always did on other nights in Brooklyn. They’d even done it when my mother died. They started out weeping and mournful. Then got formal. And then drunk and singing the old songs. It was what the Irish had instead of the blues.

By midnight the place was a steady thumping roar, Hank Williams and beer and some white lightnin that Boswell brought in from outside, and then the door burst open and two jolly fat girls came waddling in, bellowing “yee-HAW” at the crowd. Sal yelled
“Tons of Fun!”
And went running at them, yelling “Hee-Fuckin-HAW!” And leaped, as the women, whose names were Betty and Freddie, made a cat’s cradle with their hands and caught him in the air, like a turn in a circus, like something they’d rehearsed. They began rubbing their breasts in Sal’s face, and Freddie grabbed his crotch and massaged it, while Sal screamed in mock panic: “Get me a priest! Get me a fuckin
priest
!”

I looked at Dixie and she shook her head at me.
No
. A sign. A message.
No
. Did they have the clap?
No
. And then Freddie and Betty let go of Sal and he fell to the dirt floor with his feet straight up in the air like the last panel in
Mutt and Jeff
and the whole bar cheered and more beers came slamming down on the bar and Sal grabbed my arm and said, “Come and meet my
Fee-ahn-says …
”

 … And the girls were beside us at the bar, rubbing, pressing,
Boswell sticking a tongue in Betty’s ear, Sal faking exhaustion, Maher paralyzed. And Freddie swore that she once sucked Hank’s dick and Betty said that was the truth and Freddie said that Hank had a tiny little dick and was built like a weed and Betty said, No lie, and Freddie said that when she heard the news she wished it had been her instead of Hank Williams and how bad he musta felt all his life about that itty-bitty pecker and how he never did get to use it all that much, what with the drinkin and everything. She poured some cold Jax down her throat without ever touching the bottle to her lips, which made Sal holler in delight. While Betty played with me. And Dixie Shafer shook her head again, No, saying with her look, Don’t dare, saying, Absolutely not. Saying
No
.

Until they all were gone, sailors and whores, Sal leaving with Betty and Freddie, shouting “Hank would want it this way!” And the others paired off or left alone, while the floor rolled under me like an ocean swell and the walls advanced and receded and the jukebox went silent at last. Dixie Shafer looked at me across the bar and then glanced at the corridor leading to the back room. There were no lights down there. She took off the harlequin glasses and slid them between her breasts, then reached across the bar and took my hand in hers.

“First one is on the house,” she said.

Chapter

18

What Dixie Told Me

I
’
m from Kentucky,
originally. Breathitt County. Ever hear of hit? All mountains and forests and then the mines later on. My daddy was a Hardshell Baptist and in that little pineboard church of theirs, hit was real strict, I tell you. Women on one side the aisle, men on the other, and a lot of singin and tambourines but nothin you could call fun. There was a preacher came when I was eight year old, a Reverent Woodford, and he was somethin. That’s when they started the footwashin and the snake handlin. The footwashin warnt nothin, really, all of us there watchin, as theyd get down and wash each others feet
.

But the snakehandlin, that was a different matter haltogether. They always did the snakes at night and I remember seeing everybody coming through the woods with lanterns and big shadows everywhere until we got to that little board church, just a sign in hit saying “Jesus is Comin” and a potbelly stove and kerosene lamps on the walls. The women almost all wore gingham in them days. And the men—by that time they uz miners—they hung their helmets on nails and got in the aisles and waited for the snakes
.

The Reverent Woodford would start hit, holdin a rattler in his hands, and prayin to the Lord, and soon people started wailin, beatin them tambourines, speakin in tongues, and the Reverent uz tellin them that if they uz without sin the Lord would protect them and if they warn’t then they uz in big trouble. Well, my daddy never would do hit and my momma said that uz proof he uz sinnin, he must have him some woman down the hollow, he must be drinkin liquor in the damn mines. But he said, No, he warnt gonna do hit, no snakes for him. And he stuck by his guns, until one night, I uz about twelve, we were there, and Momma uz pressin him, and the music got to playin louder and louder, and someone shouted, and I uz up shoutin, cause they called that The Shouts, hit just come right out of you. And then all of a suddint, Momma had a rattler in her hands, in front of all of them, and Daddy uz a bit shamed, and they were shoutin louder, and then Daddy uz up there too, I guess to get rid of his shame, or maybe to keep Momma, and the shoutin got to be real powerful, and I got real excited, and then
pow!
I tell you, boy, I know now what happen to me. I
came.
I just plumb
came.
Without no cock in me. Without no help at all. I just
came,
boy!

I uz something else, then, boy. Not what I am now. Boys thunk I uz a lovely girl. And I uz risin again and Daddy had that four-foot rattler in his hands and I felt hit comin again, felt the explosion comin up in me. And then the rattler bit Daddy. First rattled. Then bit him right in the neck. Rattled. Bit him again. And Daddy dropped the rattler and backed up and he had this look in his eyes like he jest seed the Devil and then he fell back and the chapel become quiet and Momma just stood up, she dint cry, she dint run to him. I did. I dint care where the rattler went, I went to my Daddy. I cried at him, Daddy. I cried Oh Daddy get up. Oh Daddy, I love ya Daddy. But hit dint do no good. We buried Daddy two days later with the wind howlin down the hollows and Reverent Woodford singin and all of them lookin at me, and I could tell they uz thinkin, Poor child, her Daddy uz a sinner
.

Momma kept on keepin on. She could weave. She knew how to shear a sheep and card the wool and spin hit into yarn. Then she sold the weavins to someone who brung them down someplace to the river and sold them. We lived in a little ole shambly place, a shack really, but hit had a good stone fireplace, and there uz always enough pumpkin and sorghum, gravy and onions, cornbread and shucky beans. Most days I watched the least-uns, while Momma worked the loom. She never did mention Daddy and his sin. She dint mention him at all
.

And then one night I come home from the woods at night and hit gettin to be real dark cause we had no electrick in them days, not even radios, nothin up in them hills at all. And then I saw the Reverent Woodford in the clearin out back of the shack and hit warnt snakes he was handlin, hit was Momma’s titties. I stayed all night alone in the woods, cryin mostly for my Daddy, and began to thinkin about goin out to the world
.

I knew there had to be a world out there, cause I seen hit in the Montgomery Ward catalogs. I couldn’t read the words, but Cousin Frances could. And I near memorized the names of the things you could get out in the world. Dr. Scott’s Electric Hairbrush, good for headache and dandruff. Don’t laugh, boy! And stuff called Mum and Kotex and Listerine and Odorono. Cuticura soap and perfume called Wild Rose and Shandon Bells and Ylang Ylang and Dr. Fuller’s Bust Developer and Food (I sure never did need that stuff). Most of all I wanted a gown called Moonlight Sonata. I remember what hit said in the catalog: “You, winsome and desirable in clouds of rayon net, your tiny waist sashed with whispering rayon taffeta.” For three ninety-eight. Oh, how I wanted to be winsome and desirable. Down there in the world
.

I also knew about the world from Uncle Fred that was married to Aunt Mildred. He’d been down to the world. Actually seen hit, lived in hit, and told me all about hit. How people lived in brick houses and had roads with tar on them and stores with gowns in them better than in the Montgomery Ward catalogs and how everybody went to school and workin people owned cars. I made him tell me over an over about the gowns. And the jewlry. And he could really speak, Uncle Fred, so he made me see all the beautiful stuff of the world
.

Then, I met Robert. I uz talkin to him a long time, and then he got to be laying with me crost a bed. Not doin nothin. Jest touchin. But we decided to get married. I said, Okay Momma, but I don’t want that Reverent Woodford to do no service, and she said Why, and I said, Because. So we got us a preacher from over the ridge. He come to the house and did a big praying service for us and later we had a big shivaree and then we moved into the hayloft. Robert war a big strong boy, a woodcutter by trade, but he had him a pindling little dick. That uz so sad. Momma gave me a poke o’ wheat to help me have babies, but hit dint do no good. Hit jest warnt to be. Poor Robert was so worried bout the size of his dick, he couldn’t get hit hard. So he moped all the time and drunk a lot
.

He got worse when I started goin to the new school. This got to be round the time Roosevelt sent them teachers into the hills and there was a young man from up North, from Pennsylvania, from out in the world. Eli. He was a Jewboy. Like that boy Max comes in the Dirt Bar. Eli come among us and got us to put up the school. Just a plain board buildin with a tin roof and a stove and no electrick. The girls had to go to the outhouse four at a time to keep them boys out of there. But kids come six, eight mile to that school, and even ef I uz too old, I wanted to learn me something about the world, so I went to that young man from up North and I said I wanted to learn how to read and I’d help with the least-uns if he’d teach me. And he said yes
.

Well, you couldn’t learn some of them boys nothin with a pistol in yore hands, but he did his best. Eli. The Jewboy. When there got to be snow on the ground, the kids dint come. When the creeks were up, they stayed home too. But Eli taught us, he showed us words, he had us make poetry, he showed us a great big map of the world. And I’d get all het up and go home and tell Robert. And soon he was sure I was layin for Eli, which I warnt. Robert dint believe me and one night he went down and burnt that school to the ground
.

So Eli left and I walked around the hills for two days callin his name, trying to get him to stay. Them hills used to be so thick and beautiful. But then the loggin people come and they started cutting down the trees. They rolled them down to the creeks and floated them off to the mills where they were cut into lumber, and soon the hills were naked. But even in the naked hills, Eli warnt to be seen. And I thought: there’s nothin left for me in this valley
.